Welcome back to a new semester! To start off the semester with a bang, I did something unprecedented: I sat down with President Lucas Gallo and asked him some tough, pertinent questions. Let’s see what he had to say:
Portions of this interview have been removed or condensed for space.
The interview started with questions regarding Dean Kristie Damell’s departure. Gallo’s answers will be featured in the article “Three recent departures loom over the future of Student Life.”
Mark: How do you see [the departure of Kristie Damell] affecting the SGA and your roles as a whole?
Lucas: More than ever we need to step up our game. I think we’re at a pivotal point where I don’t want to have to email Chris to email Sara to email Mary Beth. I’m just going to email Mary Beth even though that was the bureaucracy I had to go through.
It’s stupid.
It’s stupid, I know. I think now its better than ever that I can now just go right to Mary Beth because I know Chris is managing thousands of other things. I think it’s a really good time for the student government.
How come you couldn’t have taken the approach beforehand?
Because there is a lot of bureaucracy that you have to go through.
How come you decided to say screw the bureaucracy? Was it just with this upheaval in Student Life?
I think it’s just that I was afraid. It’s definitely getting used to the position; you have to play the rules a little bit in the beginning. You have to make sure that you’re meeting people for the first time and getting those introductions. But after that, you get to make the role what you want it to be. I reflected over the summer, that even at the end of the last semester, I felt we were being more proactive and bold and being able to do exactly what we wanted to be doing. We accomplished every single goal that we set out at the beginning of the semester.
What were your primary goals then that you accomplished?
I think it was different than what we originally stated, but I think that’s good. If you only are looking at what you want to get accomplished and not listening to the student body and what their concerns are you’re not doing your job. When we were running we were talking about art on campus and things like that, but then the conversation on campus switched to mental and physical health. And by the end of the semester, we did some really good things that I’m very proud of. And even if it helps one person, saves one life, it’s 1000% better.
How much do you think the SGA did on the mental and physical health problem versus administration recognizing there is a problem?
I think that we humanized the problem. I think we gave a student perspective to it, which was very valuable for them taking bolder steps to address the problem. But if you hear it through the grapevine and not from an actual student, it doesn’t really hit home. The urgency isn’t there, but when you go into the cabinet meeting and say, “my friends are dying, like, my friends are dying. I had two of my best friends die last semester,” I think that speaks to them. I really believe we did so much.
So one of your goals is that you want to have more undergraduates or the SGA Cabinet meet with the young alumni on the Board of Trustees. How come you have developed that goal?
It’s nice to have students’, that are currently here, perspectives on different issues. We want to have a really close relationship with them and one thing we are pushing for is for them to release their agendas so we can give our feedback on agendas. You can’t go for it all at once. You have to go in steps.
Just based off the agendas?
Hopefully, I don’t know what the agendas consist of. They’re private and I’m not on the Board of Trustees.
You have other organizations, namely Khoda, which lists in its bylaws that one of their responsibilities is to meet with the young alumni on the Board of Trustees, both before and after their meetings. Do you think the SGA is trying to take this responsibility from them? Do they have a place on campus if you were to usurp this responsibility from them?
I don’t know. I’m not in Khoda. I think it’s important that the students know who the voice is coming from. I’m all about transparency too, and if they have the whole Board who is telling the young alumni things, I’d love to know who that is. So I’m happy that the student government would have something more formalized so that the students know that their voices are at least being heard by someone that they elected and not by a person that got like accepted into a club.
I think it’s important that someone who is elected by the student body is meeting with them. And I don’t know why that hasn’t been done in the past, but I’m excited that we’re hopefully going to be doing that.
The responsibility of being accredited by Middle States mainly falls on administration. Right now, you want to push more student involvement because that was recommended by Middle States. How come you decided to take this response and not just leave it to administration?
I think we are trying to push a lot of the responsibility on the administration. But, you can only push responsibility if you get involved yourself first. I’m trying to get them to have their own surveys at every student checkpoint so that they’re the ones collecting the data and that it doesn’t fall on the students where we have to backtrack every single person that maybe went to CAPS to try to get feedback but then when we go to administration that feedback is not necessarily accepted because it’s not in their survey. [But it should be accepted if] they’re the ones in charge of their own feedback with student oversight. So I want someone in student government to have access to those things. They at least know that the survey questions are exactly how they want it worded. I mean obviously we’re going to have input on what the survey is. They can’t question individual wording about certain things. They can’t question the number of responses they’re getting. They can’t question student feedback that we’re getting.
Is Stevens Student-Centric?
I’d say that Stevens is trying to become student-centric, and that mission was set out seven years ago when President Farvardin came here, and we’ve only been getting more and more access to becoming student-centric. I don’t think you can say whether Stevens is student-centric or not because you can be doing more to make it more student-centric. It’s not a yes or no question. Are we student-centric? We’re trying our best, but we can only do better. I think the student government is a big part of making sure that we are making it as student-centric as possible. So my answer to that is not a yes or no, but we’re doing our best. You can always make it better.
*****
That question concluded my interview with Gallo. Overall, I was pleased with Gallo’s responses to my questions. I think his renewed approach in dealing with administration is great and I hope that it succeeds. However, I was disappointed with his answer about student-centricity. Though he said that he is done putting up with administration earlier in the column, his answer to the question felt like he was trying to appease both students and administration.
Stay tuned next time for some more exciting content. It only gets more presidential from here.
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